THE Church Times Train-A-Priest (TAP) Fund is being re-launched this year amid significant changes to the way in which ordination candidates’ training and maintenance are funded in the Church of England.
Currently, the national Ministry Development Team pays tuition fees to the theological education institutions (TEIs), while a candidate’s sponsoring diocese is responsible for their maintenance grant. The size of the maintenance depends on factors that include the candidate’s training pathway, their marital status, housing costs, and own financial resources.
While the Ministry Development Team pays some of the maintenance costs for residential training, most costs are met through the system of “pooled maintenance”, designed to ensure that the costs faced by dioceses in sponsoring candidates in full-time ordination training are shared fairly. The total costs are apportioned and taken into account in assessing each diocese’s contribution to the Archbishops’ Council’s budget in the following year.
In recent years, questions have been raised over the fairness of the amounts for which ordinands are eligible. More than one third (36 per cent) of ordinands in the 2019 Living Ministry survey reported that, when it came to finances, they were “just getting by” or “finding it difficult”.
The diocesan finances review published in 2024 (News, 21 June 2024) concluded: “Current arrangements for funding ministry training are extremely complex and opaque, with multiple money flows and adjustments required over time between the Archbishops’ Council, dioceses and the TEIs.”
Spending plans approved by the General Synod last year abolished diocesan apportionment and the ordinand maintenance-pooling arrangements. A new single Ministry Training Fund is being established for ordination-training costs, incorporating all fees, living allowances, and expenses. The document Spending Plans 2026-28 promises “a much clearer, simplified and standardised framework to allow prospective ordinands greater clarity and confidence about the support they would receive, and to ensure that support is sufficient”.
Although the document refers to “simplified and more generous maintenance arrangements”, exact figures are yet to be published. In the current year (2025-26), each ordinand eligible for maintenance is receiving an additional £3000, to top up their payment before the new system is introduced. This was in part funded by Angela Tuddenham’s legacy to the TAP Fund.
The Ministry Training Fund will be administered nationally by the Ministry Development Team, and largely funded by dioceses. Contributions will be determined by a formula based on clergy numbers, assets per capita, and population wealth. This means that the contributions will not be directly linked to the number of ordinands sent by that diocese, “avoiding any financial disincentive to encourage vocations”.
The new processes are expected to be in place from September. Ordinands will apply directly to the Archbishops’ Council Ministry Development Team for their maintenance grant and will claim any expenses from the Archbishops’ Council.
The Council has forecast a significant rise in the number of ordinands expected to start training in the coming years: from 391 in 2025 to 600 in 2028.